Annette Bezor

People are products of both socio-cultural and biological processes. These processes conflict with each other and create a degree of tension within individuals that depends on their circumstances. In various societies, at various times in history, these competing pressures produce quite different kinds of social constructs. These social constructs are reflected in the art of those societies, and Bezor re-employs that art as an analytical tool to reconsider contemporary mores and values.

Bezor uses a range of painting techniques to support her analysis. Her Entanglement series of paintings (c1989-2011) are typically composites of several original and appropriated images located in a contrasting, expressionistic ground. The resulting visual construct becomes a metaphor for the construction of identity. Entanglement-Complicity (2010) clashes images of a Madonna and Child with Japanese Geisha and the classical art nude — three archetypal roles traditionally assigned to women in male-dominated societies — and the figures look as if they are emerging from a maelstrom.

Bezor's appropriation of imagery and reconsideration of past art are strategies intended to address the representation of women and women’s sexuality as much as the nature or history of art itself. And while the painting techniques she uses question the nature of painting as an art form, they are primarily used to create powerful metaphors.

In Lookers (2011) and For all the tea in China (2013), for example, the underpainting shows through the surface and appears physically ravaged, so that the pretty faces painted over the top appear damaged. The resulting imagery alludes to the superficial nature of beauty and suggests the inevitability and actuality of aging and deterioration.